


The Abbess

by spoke



Category: Breath of Fire IV
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-12
Updated: 2011-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-14 16:39:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/151317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoke/pseuds/spoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Abbess at Synestra, thinking of the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Abbess

The Abbess

The passage from Kyrie to Synestra is one of my oldest memories. It is natural for it to be vague, I suppose. The strongest impression I have is of darkness and the smell of water.

The sound of peoples' voices seems softer in my memory. It is strange, because I know there were a great many people there; those voices should have been louder than the waters. We had gone into the tunnels to escape that Hex which was said to be aimed at Synestra. Other towns had already been destroyed.

Other people, I was told, were still there when the Hex fell. I don't doubt it; I have seen that sort of stubbornness. It is born of a great many things: pride, ignorance, sometimes simply because a person is so weary of the fear that they refuse to go. Some places are worse than others; in Chamba they were far enough from the border that they believed they did not need to fear it.

Even when the ghosts are gone, I expect it will remain a ghost town.

Why my own parents chose not to go, I do not understand. I was told by my adoptive parents that I came to Kyrie in the arms of a man who said he was my Uncle. He gave me over to thier care, and went back for my parents.

I do know he was not the only one who went back; it was a matter of gossip for some years, the fate of those who tried to enter Synestra that day.

Every aspect of it was gone over, repeatedly. Whether they believed it had been Hexed, what motives they might have had, the honor (or lack thereof) in their motivations. Over the years, I heard enough of it that I ceased to listen. There was no reason for any of it, not the petty gossip, nor the resentment and fears it fed.

In my teenaged years, before we were allowed to return, I became so sick of the stories that I snuck back into the tunnel.

For all the times I'd replayed the fragments of my memories, I had quite forgotten the tunnels. They have a rather austere beauty to them. The water creates a constant music by its flowing, a balance of complexity and simplicity that men could never duplicate.

I did not go very far into them. It seemed enough, even after my bragging about going all the way to Synestra, to stand and listen. I never even told my friends I had gone in; I let them believe I was a coward, rather than share something so personal.

Looking back, I suppose it must have been my first truly religious experience.

After that I never looked at Kyrie in quite the same way. I was one of the few children there; but I remembered many others, and wondered where they had gone. I saw the people who gossiped most, and I wondered why they never talked about what they had been doing that day.

I suppose the next event that had the most impact on my life was meeting the Purifiers after I left home. From them I learned that Synestra had been cleansed. It was a terrible shock, although if shouldn't have been.

I suppose thinking that it would always be Hexed was a way of not dealing with it.

Tahn in particular was a surprise, so young to be among them, and when I asked how... Hearing how he had begun to grow up in the streets of Chamba, before it was Hexed, was a revelation. I had been terribly spoiled, you see. No one's life could have been as miserable as mine, because I had been sheltered from the sight of other lives. But Tahn, so hard and so young, showed me what could come of a harder life than mine.

At some point in my wandering, it came to me that it was not in my nature to be rebellious, to be a wanderer. It was more that I was looking for something. That was very important, as it led to the thought that I would be far happier in one place.

For all I am called Sister, there has never been much of an organized religion in the East. There are those who serve the rarely seen Dragons, for their respective tribes, of course. But it serves its purpose, reassuring those who might be hesitant to let us care for the children.

Speaking of which, I do believe Chino is at it again...


End file.
